


Fish Thing

by dudebro69



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Bodyswap, Gem Biology, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Canon, Temporary Amnesia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:41:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27575339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dudebro69/pseuds/dudebro69
Summary: Swapping bodies across species may cause adverse side effects.
Relationships: Spinel & Steven Universe
Kudos: 15





	Fish Thing

Vision returned painfully, undercut with the familiar sharp ringing in his ears that often followed an explosion or a blow to the head. The ceiling of the rotting jungle temple, cracked wide, pouring in rainwater and deep green hanging plant vines, appeared to him to be rendered in more vibrant colors than he’d ever seen. 

In his frustration to tame Spinel's reckless curiosity he'd missed the arcs of gold inlaid in the dome overhead, how all of the flora grew towards the artifact’s pedestal as if the tiny thing were a second sun. 

Steven was soaked through and laid out upon the stone floor, though his clothes didn’t stick to his skin and he wasn’t sweating. He didn’t want to move; he wasn’t sure he knew how.

Coughing, spluttering, somewhere past his feet.

Did he know them? What’s happening? _Where am I? Is this even real? Am I me?_

Fear ran through him at the thought. It came suddenly, from the unconscious part of his mind without buffer or contemplation. He could recall each instance of depersonalization in his life now that he knew what it was, thanks to that neglected therapist of his. Usually it came at the unstable end of a fusion or during a fight. It wasn’t that it was all unreal, it was too real. He was here, a part of this universe, and time seemed like a false, disconnected thing.

_“...Steven?”_

_Who is that?_

The name was his, of course. Was that… His voice? He wasn’t the one using it.

 _“Speven?”_ They asked timidly, leaning into his line of sight. 

Okay, that was funny. Steven giggled in a pitch unfamiliar, without losing breath. His voice rang in his head instead of his chest. 

His own hands pulled him up into a hug.

 _“Stinel?”_ Steven whispered. He couldn't even lift his arms to hug her back.

Spinel let out a weak laugh against his neck. She had to hug tight to keep him up; his legs were literally spaghetti. 

“I’m sorry I touched the Thing.” She croaked.

_Thing? Thing, thing..._

The Thing! On the floor over Stinel’s - Spinel in Steven’s body - Spinel’s shoulder. It was animated now. The artifact looked like a glass fish from an older human’s yard sale, now with shades of pink and black liquid swirling inside, no longer the opaque polished gold they’d first seen.

Unable to clearly recount the events that lead to this predicament, yet sure he was also at fault, Steven apologised, “No, Spinel, I’m sorry.”

Spinel set Steven’s body down to rest against the pillar, then backed off and brought her hand to her chin in thought. 

His body didn’t want to cooperate at all, but malaise had clouded his mind before his thoughts could turn to complete panic. He wore funny jester shoes now, on the end of pink and white spools of legs. His own body - his actual body - looked funny too, that ‘thinking’ face was just too much, but his voice made him cringe.

“If both of us touching the Thing at the same time switched us, then doing it again should put us back!”

“I… Don’t thi-”

Spinel shoved the artifact in his limp, gloved hand, holding the other side. No light, buzzing, nausea, nothing. Her toothy grin of glowing optimism dropped like a stone.

Some water dripped from the hanging plants onto her face. A drop landed directly in her eye and she made an expression like it was the worst pain she’d ever experienced.

She growled, jumping up, hurling the Thing in frustration. Steven flinched as it clanged behind him but didn’t break. The ornate floor tiles around the pillar smashed easily, like river ice as she stomped. With the impetus of fear, Steven finally found his (squeaking) feet, tripping away from the pedestal where the fish artifact was found before Spinel shattered it with a punch.

“Everything hurts.” Collapsed on the rubble of her outburst, facing away from him, she cradled her broken hand. She fell into coughing again, now wet and choked with tears.

“How do you live like this?”

He understood her meaning immediately. Steven was still getting the hang of his new form. His legs were at a working length. Right arm was almost there, but his left was still dragging on the floor behind him. A little disturbing to look at. Still, he made the effort to toss his body on hers now that she was burnt out.

“I’m never gonna get used to breathing.”

”In,” Spinel took a deep breath, then slowly released it, “Out.” 

She kept going, unaware that she was calming her half-organic form with the action. 

“How am I supposed to remember to do that every second? And this?” She showed him her bloodstained hand but all signs of skin injury had already healed. She sighed and licked herself like she’d seen him do many times, the biological fluid dissipating in a pink sparkle. “What if we’re stuck like this?”

“I miss breathing.” He spoke, reeling in his left arm to study the 100% hard-light technology up close.

Spinel turned to stare at him skeptically, waiting for him to continue, which he did not.

“Why are ya so calm? Shouldn’t you be the one crying? Grabbing me by the shirt and shaking me? You not freakin’ out is freakin’ me out.”

Steven seemed half the world away. He stood and spun his strange elongated left arm like a hammer-throw then released. The hand sailed across the room, squeaking as it slapped against a far away wall, much to his amusement.

“I-” Steven met her eye. His stance changed to one of confusion, his expression still familiar on another face as his own. “I don’t know. I don’t really wanna be a gem at the best of times, so this should be way scarier for me than it is.”

With his dud arm draped around his neck like a scarf, he offered his working hand, pulling her to her feet unsteadily upon the broken rocks. 

Taking in his own face through her eyes, she found herself deeply uncomfortable with the discretionary gaze. It was not _her_ face, but at that moment it was and she _had half a mind to sock the guy in his_ \- her... own face.

She couldn’t see the same entrancement in her own visage. She was a well-cut Spinel with an atypical form borne out of despair rather than her own conscious design. And Spinels are constantly fluctuating; more so than most gems. Her projection was as uninteresting to her as the gem she had looked down upon for six thousand years.

“Connie has good taste.” Steven took stock, nodding.

Spinel glared back humorlessly. Organics clearly had some sort of fixation concerning their appearance.

“Could definitely do a bit better with the sideburns, though.” He reached up to touch her face and she slapped his hand away with a growl. 

“I’m just kidding around!” Steven held his arm up.

Spinel pulled her top up to cover her face and fell to her knees. 

Someone had to know how to fix this. Fabric dug into her form and she didn't understand why anyone would wear such uncomfortable, restricting things. Stress made its home in her gut, building, along with a barrage of other intensely physical feelings her mind wasn’t fit for quantifying. Her head pounded. 

Light, dull and grey from the monsoon clouds, filtered through the gap above them. Vines cut shadows across the teary-eyed face of the pink gem peering up at her.

“Steven?” A whimper sounded so much more pitiful in this voice.

“Yeah?” He replied. Her own hand comforted her, rubbing gentle circles on her palms.

“I require some sort of liquid fuel.”

“You’re thirsty.”

Steven led her to a steady stream of rainwater cascading from a thinner crack in the dome. After the first sip some sort of physical desperation overtook her and she gulped until the liquid spilled out of her mouth and down her already dripping shirt.

“I was pretty thirsty before I came out. And crying and sweating and stuff uses that up.” Steven explained. He aimed his usable arm at the edge of the skylight, closed an eye, and was able to make it stretch only a few feet and come back to him with great concentration. 

“Guess I’m always gonna suck at stretching.” He muttered.

“I lost vital fluid through my eyes?!” Spinel looked absolutely horrified, drinking even more fervently.

“And your skin,” before she could lose it further he added, shrugging, “it’s completely normal. You’re fine. For humans it takes, uhm.” He tried to think back to Connie’s wilderness survival guide, “Three weeks to starve, seven days to dehydrate, three days without sleep before you start hallucinating... I can go a few hours with low oxygen, so don’t worry about that... And shower everyday ‘cos I sweat like a pig.”

“Seven days!” She dropped the pottery she was using as a water vessel. It’s shattered bits shot in various directions across the floor. “That’s nothing! You won’t have a body to go back into, and that’s assuming we can!” 

With her cry, dust fell from the shuddering stone structure above.

“Wouldn’t do that too much either.”

“I feel so-” She grumbled, struggling to find the words in her usually verbose vocabulary. “So trapped, tight, little.”

“Tight?” Steven continued to test his abilities, making himself taller in the process. “Oh, right, yeah, no shapeshifting anymore, I _would not_ recommend it.”

Feeling like he had at least enough control of his legs to make his way to the warp pad, he stored the artifact in his heart-shaped gem and waved Spinel to follow.

“Someone back home has to know how to fix this.” He spoke to reassure himself more than anyone.

“What about the diamonds?” She trailed after.

“Respectfully, no.” 

He swung himself through the gap in the roof and stretched an arm to pull Spinel up too, cutting out the absolute slog of traversing trap rooms in reverse.

Even that small expenditure had his form loose and shaky. Spinel tucked his noodling body under her arm without a word, making an ungraceful descent down the curved surface of the temple, tripping over loose limbs and her own sandals whilst Steven compulsively apologized.

Arms and legs gathered on the warp in several knots, she looked down at him, hesitant to activate the device just yet.

“When I feel like this,” She wiggled his limp arm. “It’s because I’m really mad, or sad. But you seem cooler than a cucumber.” She booped his nose - because she was beginning to see her own face as just a little cute - and he laughed, shaking his head.

“I don’t feel much of anything.” Steven shrugged as much as he was able. The rain tapered off, but she was suddenly much colder than when this all began.

“Something extra weird happened with me, I think. But stuff’s coming back... I think.” Steven looked off to the side, which was actually the ground with his orientation.

“You’re doin’ a lot of thinkin’.” Her voice wavered with nerves, her usual vocal fry unnatural in this register. Her throat hurt.

“I think my... brain? Is broken.”

Once again she stared down at him with alarm, but Steven seemed unbothered by his words. In her head were the fragments of a working theory, but right now she just wanted to dry off and fix this before she had to eat something, or worse.


End file.
